How Can I Politely Describe Crazies and Kooks?

A reader named Steve says he’s disappointed in me because I have “resorted to name calling” in my recent blogs.  He doesn’t think that’s the right way to debate the issues of the day.

I agree.

But in the interests of accuracy, how am I to describe the conservatives who have been getting all the press recently without using unflattering terms?

How can I describe Christine O’Donnell, the Republican Senate candidate in Delaware, without using words like “crazy,” or “right-wing” or “idiot”?

How can I be respectful of Rand Paul, the Republican Senate candidate in Kentucky, when he persistently spews racist, jingoistic and financially nonsensical garbage on the air?

What flattering terms would you be able to find for Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann? Or Nevada Republican candidate Sharron Angle?

Or – God help us – Fox News’ Glenn Beck and radio rabble rouser Rush Limbaugh?

What about Newt Gingrich’s “scholarly” dissertation on President Obama’s Kenyan roots and their influence on his administration? How do you discuss trash like that without resorting to name calling?

And then there’s Jim Russell, who is carrying the Republican flag in New York state. He is so extreme that the Republican Party is trying to stop him from running for Congress. Among other things – many other “crazy” things – this guy writes “scientific” papers warning against integrated schools because, he says, they encourage intermarriage, which he vehemently opposes.

He uses finches to point out the “dangers” of mingling socially with people outside your own race:

It has been demonstrated that finches raised by foster parents of a different species of finch will later exhibit a lifelong sexual attraction toward the alien species. One wonders how a child’s sexual imprinting mechanism is affected by forcible racial integration and near continual exposure to media stimuli promoting interracial contact. The most serious implication of human sexual imprinting for our genetic future is that it would establish the destructiveness of school integration, especially in the middle and high-school years. One can only wonder to what degree the advocates of school integration, such as former NAACP attorney Jack Greenberg, were conscious of this scientific concept. It also compounds the culpability of media moguls who deliberately popularize miscegenation in films directed toward adolescents and pre-adolescents. In the midst of this onslaught against our youth, parents need to be reminded that they have a natural obligation, as essential as providing food and shelter, to instill in their children an acceptance of appropriate ethnic boundaries for socialization and for marriage.

If you think that’s mind boggling, how about the Republican candidate for governor of the state of New York, a Neanderthal named Carl Paladino, who looks like a character from “The Godfather” and talks like a guttersnipe.

“Name calling” doesn’t begin to do Paladino justice. You’ll have to come up with your own description after viewing these “humorous” emails he circulated:

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-hate-to-be-shrill-and-all-but-tea.html

These examples are not isolated cases. The Republican roster for the mid-term election in November includes far more “kooks” than ever before.

And what’s even more troubling is that they have become so influential in the party that Republican politicians who used to be considered reasonable are talking like them.

So forgive me if I resort to name calling. But these SOBs cannot be ignored, and there’s no other way to describe them accurately.